Inside The Third Reich by Albert Speer
Okay, so I’m really into reading about WW2. I think that Word War II illustrated the most brutal of possibilities of mankind. World War 2 not only shows man at it’s worst (and best), but it also had enormous effect on how the world got to HERE. (“here” being to this very second in time). I consider “Inside The Third Reich” to be one of the most powerful documentations of the point of view of one of the top Nazis. I’m very thankful that the Soviet prosecutors at Nuremberg did not get their way with Albert Speer. If Albert Speer would have been executed, the world would have been deprived of possibly one of the most important books in history.
For those who don’t know, Albert Speer was still fresh out of architect school when he was summoned by the newly “elected” Hitler to do some work. Hitler set incredibly tough deadlines for which Speer was to not only design buildings but also oversee their completion. In short, Hitler set nearly impossible goals and Speer, to the shock of everyone, was able to consistently hit these marks. Speer showed tremendous talents in organization. He became Hitlers #1 architect where he enjoyed a relationship with Hitler that very very few people had actually seen. Speer was design the major landmarks for which the 1,000 empire would be known for just like the Rome is known for today.
Of course the war took precedent eventually. Hitler had overstepped his bounds and got himself into a pickle. Eventually, Speer was chosen by Hitler to be head of armament for the Nazis. His job was to make sure that the country was most efficiently using it’s resources to produce as many bullets, rifles, bombs, and planes as possible.
Inside The Third Reich starts a little slow. This may be do to my lack of interest in architectural design. However, it doesn’t take long for a person interested in the second World War to immediately see the enormous value of what it is like for a real human being who knew Hitler as well as anyone to speak his mind on the issues of the times. For all practical purposes, Speer was not a demon. Far from it! Albert Speer was simply caught up in his own ambitions. He wanted nothing more to design impressive buildings. He had gotten the gig of the century. It just so happened that his boss, who had ideas that few people always agreed with, would go down as possibly being the single most evil human being to walk the face of the Earth. When Speer was assigned the role of Minister of Armament, he was shocked, but accepted it as a duty to his country. While Speer was aware that there were some sickening things going on in the Nazi world (which dominate our views of Nazis today) at the time, these things were seldom mentioned in Inside The Third Reich. I do not feel that Albert Speer was hiding anything. Quite the contrary! I think he was in a situation where he worked extremely hard at helping Germany win the war. It wasn’t his job to consider why Germany was in the war and it appeared more noble for him to use his talents to help his country win a struggle than it did to look for flaws in it.
Simply put, I don’t think Albert Speer was a bad guy. In fact, there are elements of this book that illustrate that he may have been one of the very few good people to become high ranking Nazis to actually have much character beyond the usual political power struggles. Maybe I’m lured into the spell of Speer. I don’t think so. This guy wasn’t tossing Jews into the fire and he wasn’t issuing orders for this sort of thing to happen either. (I still haven’t figured out which of these two is worse). He was simply a guy who ended up working on the wrong side.
Speer mentions Hitler many many times throughout the book. They probably ate lunch together 1,000 times or more. While they were close enough to share comfortable silences, there was always a distance between Speer and Hitler. Hitler always had this isolated way to him and Speer goes into great detail on the subject in a way that you simply don’t get from the usual biographies on Hitler. There is something about the first hand account of a person who worked directly under Hitler for 12 years that can not be paralleled.
I consider this book to be INCREDIBLE for anyone interested in World War 2.
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